In the ACT at the moment kangaroos are such a problem on roads (they are moving into the suburbs for food due to drought) that the ACT Government is running an awareness campaign to try & reduce the number hit by cars.
As for spiders , I think Douglas Adams pretty much nailed it. 
Prawns.
Prawns, mudcrabs, barramundi etc are not productive fisheries by world standards. Those things and many others are all fished int hat area but the sustainable catch is trivial compared to most fisheries.
Exactly what are you planning? :dubious:
Ever notice how shifty ralph124c’s eyes are? :dubious: :dubious: :dubious:
Actually, I was thinking of importing a few for my pet store…I think I’ll call it “Poison Pets”! I’ll stock sea wasps, blue-ringed octopus, etc.
Screw those pussys who only keep non-poisonous snakes…here you can keeppets that’l kill you!
A bit of general commentary about this thread:
OK, the whole of Australia is a desert. No water, no nutrients.
Mostly the same thing.
Ah. So Padeye is wrong because parts of Australia aren’t deserts: they’re wet.
MoggyAU agrees with Blake about parts of Australia not being deserts. Hmm. Good.
Again, wet areas aren’t deserts, because they’re wet.
Oops, MoggyAU was wrong, because even the wet areas are deserts. Poor soil.
Even the bits that are so wet they’re underwater are deserts, but it’s not because of the soil, it’s because of the lack of nutrients in the water. Or something.
It seems that our friend Blake is the only person who truly understands what the word “desert” means. The rest of us use it at our peril.
Let me see if I can find some rolleyes somewhere.
C’mon, Desmo, be reasonable.
Blake has made it clear that he(?) is an ecologist with experience working in Australia, and his technical terms and apparent knowledge of the specifics of the different climates etc. make this easy to believe.
It’s worth remembering that in many professional fields, the terms are defined, or at least used, in a slightly different way than they are by the general public. When i think “desert” i think “Great Sandy,” but when an ecologist thinks “desert” it obviously means something more complicated than that.
Blake also took pains to point out that diversity and productivity are different things, ecologically speaking, and that there is no contradiction in the Great Barrier Reef being both extremely diverse and extremely unproductive.
For your garden funnelweb problem just keep dogs or ducks or geese. They aren’t susceptible to the venom and the poultry in particular love to hunt down those crisp, juicy arachnids.
Been there, done that. The first twenty or thirty times, you let it go. Blake’s history is a bit longer than that.
Yep Australia has a heap of poisonous thingos. I used to live in the far north of Aus where they have snakes, crocodiles, and BJ fish (bad BJ not good BJ). I have swum in the waters rumoured to contain these Box Jelly Fish and have not been stung. I am yet to see a real wild snake, I feel they are pretty shy creatures.
Of course, I swim in the “winter” months (they would actually make for really good summer months) when BJ Fish are rare and I don’t spend hours on end in the bush to see snakes, although I have seen plenty of large Water Monitor lizards, and I see a lot of crocodiles in the course of my work.
My rambling point is that you can quite happily live a fullfilling life in Australia and never come across anything more threatening than a Wallaby.
Probably one of the more dangerous thingos in Aus is the humble mosquito which has the nasty habit of carrying various fatal diseases with it.
YMMV
Good luck introducing Funnel Webs to the States.
Seconded. I’ve found Blake’s post in this thread consistent, interesting, and some of the best I’ve read on this board.
That part has always bothered me. They can’t kill a cute little bunny rabbit, but they kill me dead. What have they got against me?? I don’t eat spiders!
It’s definitely a fallacy that you need to be on your toes constantly in Australia. I’m never worried about being poisoned or bitten here. The only thing I worry about is not camping under a tree, because of the dropbears. Oh, and not sitting on a green ant nest.
If you come across a snake in the bush (which happens rarely) it will invariably be sunbaking on a rock, not about to attack you. You will see copious kangaroos if you travel out far enough into the country; they are considered a pest by farmers. I have actually had a pet kangaroo. She was a beautiful animal, had the longest eyelashes. We made her a pouch out of a hessian bag. 
How many do you have to milk to get a decent shake?
Remember that Simpsons episode where the Koala stows away on their helicopter? Remember how ominous the music was?
Wait before you nuke Australia! Clearly the whole problem can be solved by sprinkling fertilizer evenly over the whole area, and diverting the rain patterns so it gets more water.
Then all those creatures will get bigger, grow fur, and have cute fuzzy big-eyed kitten-like offspring, like everywhere else.
Win-Win!
Desmostylus I have no idea what your problem is, but it appears that you are just a troll. It’s hard to imagine that any adult could seriously read “ What all this has meant is that there is s chronic resource shortage for most of the continent. Not just water but protein and minerals are in very limited supply in most places.” And respond with “OK, the whole of Australia is a desert. No water, no nutrients.”
And yet that is exactly what you have done.
Your behaviour has been reported to the moderators. I will leave it up to them to judge whether you are trolling or not. It is sufficient to point out at this stage that all other posters seem to have no such problems understanding what I have posted and that I am willing to back up any comments I have made with any number of highly authoritative references.
It’s basically just random chance. The venom acts on specific proteins within the nerves. That particular protein is similar enough in structure between humans and insects that the protein can bond chemically to both. It is dissimilar enough in other mammals to render the protein harmless. It’s not that the spiders have anything against you, it’s just dumb luck. The same thing is seen in the activity of numerous other chemicals that have evolved as insecticides. Chemicals like pyrethrum are harmless to humans but will kill marsupials simply through evolutionary luck of the draw. Aspirin is harmless to humans but will kill cats. Theobromine in chocolate is harmless to humans but will kill dogs. It’s just down to whether the random nature of evolutionary change.
WTF? How did I apparently respond to levdrakon’s question before he posted it?
Does this count as evidence of psychis ability?
There’s a temporal anomaly going around the boards. Once they get the sensors back on-line, they’ll probably use the internal deflectors to generate a randomly oscillating frequency pattern to negate it.
In the meantime, if you see your past self, don’t say anything!
Just so long as it’s not just me who is seeing ghosts.
Depends. Not uncommonly you startle them. Particularly if you are running through the bush (as an ex-orienteer, that used to be quite common for me). Or you can accidentally corner them, which has happened to me a couple of times. I’m the first to agree that usually all they want to do is get away, but I’ve had a couple of moments where a snake and I have managed to scare the bejeezus out of each other.